3rd Entry

Amongst other tasks, I have critically contributed to a toolkit manual for improved government capacity building policies as part of the CReW project for wastewater management.

Further, it was great to see that suggestions for the social-media strategy has been taken on board and revised swiftly. One of the points agreed included engaging more in online conversation with peers and project stakeholders, which can feature UNEP CEP cases studies as well as lessons learned from the region.

As one of the projects to enhance awareness in public, the CETA team decided on four current hot topics, which UNEP CEP can contribute to the environmental section in-flight magazines of airlines serving the Caribbean:

- Invasion of the lionfish (Can the chefs make a difference?)

- Marine littering (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle)

- Mangroves (Our heroes of the wetlands)

- 2014 as the Year of the Small Island Developing States aka the SIDS

Challenges FacedUNEP CEP facilitates the dialogue that encourages shared understanding and action to tackle environmental issues and aims to improve government capacity with regards to policies and resource management. It functions as a leading example to the countries and organisations in the Caribbean; while the UN takes great effort to reduce its environmental footprint, the office progress has been inconsistent to the guideline. I feel more internal capacity building needs to take with small but powerful steps:

Lessons LearnedAfter initiating a mid-term review with my supervisors to receive feedback on work delivered so far, it was decided to meet up weekly to monitor tasks and learning progress. I then felt better equipped for the remaining time.